AsiaSat plays waiting game on next-gen high-throughput satellite

PARIS — Two years ago, AsiaSat intended to order its first dedicated high-throughput satellite. Today, AsiaSat is happy it didn’t, according to chief executive Roger Tong.

“I’m glad that we didn’t jump into AsiaSat-10 two years ago, otherwise I would have a satellite that is not very economical,” Tong said Sept. 9 at the World Satellite Business Week conference here.

AsiaSat has some high-throughput Ka-band capacity on its latest two satellites, AsiaSat-8 and AsiaSat-9. The company’s earlier plans called for a modest-sized dedicated high-throughput satellite covering China in 2020.

High-throughput satellites are mainly used for broadband communications instead of traditional broadcast services.

Tong said satellite manufacturers have steadily reduced the cost of capacity for high-throughput satellites since AsiaSat was first evaluating the market.

“When we did AsiaSat-10, the business case, the average cost we were looking at was about $3.5 million per gigabit” of capacity, Tong said.

Today, that number is less than $2 million per gigabit, he said.

The rapid improvement in high-throughput satellites is part of the reason many operators have held off buying new spacecraft. The risk is that a new satellite, designed for a typical 15-year mission, could be outdated by the time it’s ready to launch or soon after.